Brent thought he was safe. He had a paid-for house in the wild mountains of northern California, near-total self sustaining ability, and Starlink internet. Civilization of any kind was 30 minutes away, and nearly 2 hours to any sizable town. Female company would have been nice, but Brent had long ago learned that they simply didn't want what he did out of life, so on-line contact would have to do.

Brent was quite popular in the ways that mattered to him - online gaming and philosophy and doomsday-collapse discussion venues. He was very much interested in how and when modern civilization was going to collapse. He was quite certain it WOULD collapse, and probably fairly soon, but he still had no way to pin down what the trigger events might be, or in what manner the world would choose to do itself in. Brent simply wanted to make it through, watch what happened, and maybe lend a hand after in creating something better.

What Brent never expected was to be granted the ability to change all that. His frequent meditations often explored such possibilities, of course, but his grounded, logical mind had never considered that those realms of visualization might manifest themselves into the hard reality of his doomed world. The worst part was, it gave HIM a responsibility to try to change things.

He had simply been doing a normal (for him) visualization exercise, flying above the doomed cities and structures of mankind and trying to get a feel for the patterns of their self-destructive activities for his next series of posts and comments to the prepper community, of which he considered himself an associate member. Suddenly, while looking down on the human anthill that was San Francisco, something clicked. He quickly recognized the basics of what had happened from his metaphysical background - he had suddenly become fully aware of and grounded in the Astral plane.

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Beyond that, some form of huge energy connection was now his to call upon. Instead of just a flight of imagination, he was now flying over the actual city, totally invisible and insubstantial, but with all his senses (plus some new ones) acting in perfect clarity. However, he was still spectral, a ghost. He couldn't interact physically with anything. He let himself drift lower, where he could follow the actions of the individual people in the area. Immediately, he could see swirls of colors around everyone, and even more shocking, could sense their immediate intentions and bits of surface thought.

Backing off, he tried to get some sense of what had happened to him, how it had happened, and what he was supposed to do next. Beyond all that was this strange feeling he had labeled an "energy connection", it was part of him, yet somehow dormant. It was unbelievably powerful, but inactive. What was it? WHY was it? Using his new-found astral senses and movement ability, he tried to follow it to the source - but quickly becomes overwhelmed and disoriented as it led to realms he simply lacked any concepts for, and he had to drop back to the Earth-aligned part of astral space.

On a more practical level, zooming around the Earth or back to his body was simplicity itself. Though fearful of loosing the new abilities, he merged back into his physical body and found everything normal - except that he retained his astral senses. He could now see and feel his own colorful aura of swirling colors, and was quickly able to learn the basics of their meanings as they reacted in harmony with his feelings of the moment. And, putting his fears to rest, he found himself easily able to step in and out of his physical form, and could watch his body lie comatose, knowing it would call him back if anything threatened it.

After having a snack and taking care of his other bodily needs of the moment, Brent went back to exploring. He quickly found he could go anywhere and spy tracelessly on anything he came across. More than that, he could feel the intent behind any interpersonal events as they were happening - pretty well knowing their true motivations. He soon found that he could detect conflict from quite a distance if he chose to focus on such feelings.